One-drop rule

The one-drop rule is a social and legal principle of racial classification that
was historically prominent in the United States in the 20th century. It asserted
that any person with even one ancestor of sub-Saharan African ancestry ("one
drop" of black blood)[1][2] is considered black (Negro or colored in historical
terms).

This concept became codified into the law of some states in the early 20th
century. It was associated with the principle of "invisible blackness" that
developed after the long history of racial interaction in the South, which had
included the hardening of slavery as a racial caste and later segregation. It is
an example of hypodescent, the automatic assignment of children of a mixed
union between different socioeconomic or ethnic groups to the group with the
lower status, regardless of proportion of ancestry in different groups.[3]

The one-drop rule is defunct in law in the United States and was never codified
into federal law.

Antebellum conditions

Before and during the centuries of slavery, people had interracial relationships,
both forced and voluntary. In the antebellum years, free people of mixed race
(free people of color) were considered legally white if individuals had less than
one-eighth or one-quarter African ancestry (depending on the state).[4] Many
mixed-race people were absorbed into the majority culture based simply on
appearance, associations and carrying out community responsibilities. These
and community acceptance were the more important factors if a person's
racial status were questioned, not his or her documented ancestry. Because of
the social mobility of antebellum society in frontier areas, many people did not
have documentation about their ancestors anyway.

Based on late 20th-century DNA analysis and a preponderance of historical

evidence, Thomas Jefferson is widely believed to have fathered the six mixed-
race children with his slave Sally Hemings, who was herself three-quarters
white. Four of these children, who were seven-eighths white, survived to
adulthood. Hemings was a half-sister of Martha Wayles Jefferson.[quote 1] Their
children were born into slavery because of her status; as they were seven-
eighths European in ancestry, they were legally white under Virginia law of the
time.[5] Jefferson allowed the two oldest to escape in 1822 (freeing them
legally was a public action he elected to avoid because he would have had to
gain permission from the state legislature); the two youngest he freed in his
1826 will. Three of the four entered white society as adults, and all their
descendants identified as white.[5]

Although racial segregation was adopted legally by southern states of the

former Confederacy in the late 19th century, legislators resisted defining race
by law as part of preventing interracial marriages. In 1895 in South Carolina
during discussion, George D. Tillman said,

It is a scientific fact that there is not one full-blooded Caucasian on

the floor of this convention. Every member has in him a certain
mixture of... colored blood...It would be a cruel injustice and the
source of endless litigation, of scandal, horror, feud, and
bloodshed to undertake to annul or forbid marriage for a remote,
perhaps obsolete trace of Negro blood. The doors would be open
to scandal, malice, and greed.[6]

The one-drop rule was not adopted as law until the 20th century: first in
Tennessee in 1910 and in Virginia under the Racial Integrity Act of 1924
(following the passage of similar laws in several other states).

Native Americans

In the early colonial years, children born of one Indigenous and one non-Native
parent usually had a white father and an Indigenous mother. This was largely
due to the majority of the early colonists being male. As many Native American
tribes had matrilineal kinship systems, they considered the children to be born
to the mother's family and clan. If they were raised in the culture, they were
considered members of the community, and therefore, fully Native American.

Prior to colonization, and still in traditional communities, the idea of

determining belonging by degree of "blood" was, and is, unheard of. Native
American tribes did not use blood quantum law until the government
introduced the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, instead determining tribal
status on the basis of kinship, lineage and family ties.[7]

Among patrilineal tribes, such as the Omaha, historically a child born to an

Omaha mother and a white father could belong officially to the Omaha tribe
only if the child were formally adopted into it by a male citizen.[note 1] In
contemporary practice, tribal laws around citizenship and parentage can vary
widely between nations.

Between 1904 and 1919, tribal members of with any amount of African
ancestry were disenrolled from the Chitimacha tribe of Louisiana, and their
descendants have since then been denied tribal membership.[9]

Twentieth century and contemporary

In 20th century America, the concept of the one-drop rule has been primarily
applied by white Americans to those of sub-Saharan black African ancestry,
when whites were trying to maintain some degree of overt or covert white
supremacy. The poet Langston Hughes wrote in his 1940 memoir:

You see, unfortunately, I am not black. There are lots of different

kinds of blood in our family. But here in the United States, the
word 'Negro' is used to mean anyone who has any Negro blood at
all in his veins. In Africa, the word is more pure. It means all
Negro, therefore black. I am brown.[10]

This rule meant many mixed-race people, of diverse ancestry, were simply seen
as African-American, and their more diverse ancestors forgotten and erased,
making it difficult to accurately trace ancestry in the present day.

Many descendants of those who were enslaved and trafficked by Europeans

and Americans have assumed they have Native American ancestry. In 2006
Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s 2006 PBS documentary on the genetic makeup of
African Americans, African American Lives, focused on these stories of Native
American heritage in African-American communities. DNA test results showed,
after African, primarily European ancestors for all but two of the celebrities
interviewed.[11] However, many critics point to the limitations of DNA testing
for ancestry, especially for minority populations.[12][13][14]

During World War II, Colonel Karl Bendetsen stated that anyone with "one drop
of Japanese blood" was liable for forced internment in camps.[15]

Today there are no enforceable laws in the U.S. in which the one-drop rule is
applicable. Sociologically, however, the concept remains somewhat pervasive.
Some African Americans turned it around, claiming people of African descent
in order to strengthen their political unity when working on activism for civil
rights and legislation. Research has shown that some white people associate
bi-racial children with the non-white ancestry of the individual.[1][16]

Legislation and practice

Both before and after the American Civil War, many people of mixed ancestry
who "looked white" and were of mostly white ancestry were legally absorbed
into the white majority. State laws established differing standards. For
instance, an 1822 Virginia law stated that to be defined as mulatto (that is,
multi-racial), a person had to have at least one-quarter (equivalent to one
grandparent) African ancestry.[quote 2] Social acceptance and identity were
historically the keys to racial identity. Virginia's one-fourth standard remained
in place until 1910, when the standard was changed to one sixteenth. In 1924,
under the Racial Integrity Act, even the one sixteenth standard was abandoned
in favor of a more stringent standard. The act defined a person as legally
"colored" (black) for classification and legal purposes if the individual had any
African ancestry.

Although the Virginia legislature increased restrictions on free blacks following

the Nat Turner Rebellion of 1831, it refrained from establishing a one-drop rule.
When a proposal was made by Travis H. Eppes and debated in 1853,
representatives realized that such a rule could adversely affect whites, as they
were aware of generations of interracial relationships. During the debate, a
person wrote to the Charlottesville newspaper:

[If a one-drop rule were adopted], I doubt not, if many who are
reputed to be white, and are in fact so, do not in a very short time
find themselves instead of being elevated, reduced by the
judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction, to the level of a free
negro.[4]:230

The state legislators agreed. No such law was passed until 1924, apparently
assisted by the fading recollection of such mixed familial histories. In the 21st
century, such interracial family histories are being revealed as individuals
undergo DNA genetic analysis.

The Melungeons are a group of multiracial families of mostly European and

African ancestry whose ancestors were free in colonial Virginia. They migrated
to the frontier in Kentucky and Tennessee. Their descendants have been
documented over the decades as having tended to marry persons classified as
"white".[17] Their descendants became assimilated into the majority culture
from the 19th to the 20th centuries.

Pursuant to Reconstruction later in the 19th century, southern states acted to

impose racial segregation by law and restrict the liberties of blacks,
specifically passing laws to exclude them from politics and voting. From 1890
to 1908, all of the former Confederate states passed such laws, and most
preserved disfranchisement until after passage of federal civil rights laws in
the 1960s. At the South Carolina constitutional convention in 1895, an anti-
miscegenation law and changes that would disfranchise blacks were
proposed. Delegates debated a proposal for a one-drop rule to include in these
laws. George D. Tillman said the following in opposition:

If the law is made as it now stands respectable families in Aiken,

Barnwell, Colleton, and Orangeburg will be denied the right to
intermarry among people with whom they are now associated
and identified. At least one hundred families would be affected to
my knowledge. They have sent good soldiers to the Confederate
Army, and are now landowners and taxpayers. Those men served
creditably, and it would be unjust and disgraceful to embarrass
them in this way. It is a scientific fact that there is not one full-
blooded Caucasian on the floor of this convention. Every member
has in him a certain mixture of ... colored blood. The pure-blooded
white has needed and received a certain infusion of darker blood
to give him readiness and purpose. It would be a cruel injustice
and the source of endless litigation, of scandal, horror, feud, and
bloodshed to undertake to annul or forbid marriage for a remote,
perhaps obsolete trace of Negro blood. The doors would be open
to scandal, malice, and greed; to statements on the witness stand
that the father or grandfather or grandmother had said that A or B
had Negro blood in their veins. Any man who is half a man would
be ready to blow up half the world with dynamite to prevent or
avenge attacks upon the honor of his mother in the legitimacy or
purity of the blood of his father.[6][18]
In 1865, Florida passed an act that both outlawed miscegenation and defined
the amount of Black ancestry needed to be legally defined as a "person of
color". The act stated that "every person who shall have one-eighth or more of
negro blood shall be deemed and held to be a person of color." (This was the
equivalent of one great-grandparent.) Additionally, the act outlawed fornication,
as well as the intermarrying of white females with men of color. However, the
act permitted the continuation of marriages between white persons and
persons of color that were established before the law was enacted.[19]

Strangely enough, the one-drop rule was not made law until the early 20th
century. This was decades after the Civil War, emancipation, and the
Reconstruction era. It followed restoration of white supremacy in the South
and the passage of Jim Crow racial segregation laws. In the 20th century, it
was also associated with the rise of eugenics and ideas of racial purity. From
the late 1870s on, white Democrats regained political power in the former
Confederate states and passed racial segregation laws controlling public
facilities, and laws and constitutions from 1890 to 1910 to achieve
disfranchisement of most blacks. Many poor whites were also disfranchised in
these years, by changes to voter registration rules that worked against them,
such as literacy tests, longer residency requirements and poll taxes.

The first challenges to such state laws were overruled by Supreme Court
decisions which upheld state constitutions that effectively disfranchised many.
White Democratic-dominated legislatures proceeded with passing Jim Crow
laws that instituted racial segregation in public places and accommodations,
and passed other restrictive voting legislation. In Plessy v. Ferguson, the
Supreme Court allowed racial segregation of public facilities, under the
"separate but equal" doctrine.

Jim Crow laws reached their greatest influence during the decades from 1910
to 1930. Among them were hypodescent laws, defining as black anyone with
any black ancestry, or with a very small portion of black ancestry.[3] Tennessee
adopted such a "one-drop" statute in 1910, and Louisiana soon followed. Then
Texas and Arkansas in 1911, Mississippi in 1917, North Carolina in 1923,
Virginia in 1924, Alabama and Georgia in 1927, and Oklahoma in 1931. During
this same period, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska,
North Dakota, and Utah retained their old "blood fraction" statutes de jure, but
amended these fractions (one-sixteenth, one-thirty-second) to be equivalent to
one-drop de facto.[20]
Before 1930, individuals of visible mixed European and African ancestry were
usually classed as mulatto, or sometimes as black and sometimes as white,
depending on appearance. Previously, most states had limited trying to define
ancestry before "the fourth degree" (great-great-grandparents). But, in 1930,
due to lobbying by southern legislators, the Census Bureau stopped using the
classification of mulatto. Documentation of the long social recognition of
mixed-race people was lost, and they were classified only as black or white.

The binary world of the one-drop rule disregarded the self-identification both of
people of mostly European ancestry who grew up in white communities, and of
people who were of mixed race and identified as American Indian. In addition,
Walter Plecker, Registrar of Statistics, ordered application of the 1924 Virginia
law in such a way that vital records were changed or destroyed, family
members were split on opposite sides of the color line, and there were losses
of the documented continuity of people who identified as American Indian, as
all people in Virginia had to be classified as white or black. Over the centuries,
many Indian tribes in Virginia had absorbed people of other ethnicities through
marriage or adoption, but maintained their cultures. Suspecting blacks of
trying to "pass" as Indians, Plecker ordered records changed to classify people
only as black or white, and ordered offices to reclassify certain family
surnames from Indian to black.

Since the late 20th century, Virginia has officially recognized eight American
Indian tribes and their members; the tribes are trying to gain federal
recognition. They have had difficulty because decades of birth, marriage, and
death records were misclassified under Plecker's application of the law. No
one was classified as Indian, although many individuals and families identified
that way and were preserving their cultures.

In the case of mixed-race American Indian and European descendants, the

one-drop rule in Virginia was extended only so far as those with more than one-
sixteenth Indian blood. This was due to what was known as "the Pocahontas
exception". Since many influential First Families of Virginia (FFV) claimed
descent from the American Indian Pocahontas and her husband John Rolfe of
the colonial era, the Virginia General Assembly declared that an individual
could be considered white if having no more than one-sixteenth Indian "blood"
(the equivalent of one great-great-grandparent).

The eugenicist Madison Grant of New York wrote in his book, The Passing of
the Great Race (1916): "The cross between a white man and an Indian is an
Indian; the cross between a white man and a Negro is a Negro; the cross
between a white man and a Hindu is a Hindu; and the cross between any of the
three European races and a Jew is a Jew."[21] As noted above, Native American
tribes such as the Omaha, which had patrilineal descent and inheritance, used
hypodescent to classify the children of white men and Native American
women as white.

Plecker case

Through the 1940s, Walter Plecker of Virginia[22] and Naomi Drake of

Louisiana[23] had an outsized influence. As the Registrar of Statistics, Plecker
insisted on labeling mixed-race families of European-African ancestry as black.
In 1924, Plecker wrote, "Two races as materially divergent as the White and
Negro, in morals, mental powers, and cultural fitness, cannot live in close
contact without injury to the higher." In the 1930s and 1940s, Plecker directed
offices under his authority to change vital records and reclassify certain
families as black (or colored) (without notifying them) after Virginia
established a binary system under its Racial Integrity Act of 1924. He also
classified people as black who had formerly self-identified as Indian. When the
United States Supreme Court struck down Virginia's law prohibiting inter-racial
marriage in Loving v. Virginia (1967), it also declared Plecker's Virginia Racial
Integrity Act and the one-drop rule unconstitutional.

Many people in the U.S., among various ethnic groups, continue to have their
own concepts related to the one-drop idea. They may still consider those
multiracial individuals with any African ancestry to be black, or at least non-
white (if the person has other minority ancestry), unless the person explicitly
identifies as white. On the other hand, the Black Power Movement and some
leaders within the black community also claimed as black those persons with
any visible African ancestry, in order to extend their political base and
regardless of how those people self-identified. The number of self-identified
multi-racial people in the US is increasing.

Other countries of the Americas

Rice and Powell (on the left) are

 ( )
considered black in the US. Bush and
Rumsfeld (on the right) are considered
white.

Among the colonial slave societies, the United States was nearly unique in
developing the one-drop rule; it derived both from the Southern slave culture
(shared by other societies) and the aftermath of the American Civil War,
emancipation of slaves, and Reconstruction. In the late 19th century, Southern
whites regained political power and restored white supremacy, passing Jim
Crow laws and establishing racial segregation by law. In the 20th century,
during the Black Power Movement, black race-based groups claimed all people
of any African ancestry as black in a reverse way, to establish political power.

In colonial Spanish America, many soldiers and explorers took indigenous

women as wives. Native-born Spanish women were always a minority. The
colonists developed an elaborate classification and caste system that
identified the mixed-race descendants of blacks, Amerindians, and whites by
different names, related to appearance and known ancestry. Racial caste not
only depended on ancestry or skin color, but also could be raised or lowered by
the person's financial status or class.

Lena Horne was reportedly

descended from the John C.
Calhoun family, and both
sides of her family were a
mixture of African-American,

Native American, and

European American descent.

The same racial culture shock has come to hundreds of thousands of dark-
skinned immigrants to the United States from Brazil, Colombia, Panama, and
other Latin American nations. Although many are not considered black in their
homelands, they have often been considered black in US society. According to
The Washington Post, their refusal to accept the United States' definition of
black has left many feeling attacked from all directions. At times, white and
black Americans might discriminate against them for their lighter or darker
skin tones; African Americans might believe that Afro-Latino immigrants are
denying their blackness. At the same time, the immigrants think lighter-skinned
Latinos dominate Spanish-language television and media. A majority of Latin
Americans possess some African or American Indian ancestry. Many of these
immigrants feel it is difficult enough to accept a new language and culture
without the additional burden of having to transform from white to black.
Yvette Modestin, a dark-skinned native of Panama who worked in Boston, said
the situation was overwhelming: "There's not a day that I don't have to explain
myself."[24]

Professor J.B. Bird has said that Latin America is not alone in rejecting the
historical US notion that any visible African ancestry is enough to make one
black:

In most countries of the Caribbean, Colin Powell would be

described as a Creole, reflecting his mixed heritage. In Belize, he
might further be described as a "High Creole", because of his
extremely light complexion.[25]

These examples show that the perception of race is relative to different

societies and individuals.

Brazil

A Redenção de Cam (Redemption of Ham),

Modesto Brocos, 1895, Museu Nacional de
Belas Artes. The painting depicts a black
 grandmother, mulatta mother, white father
and their quadroon child, hence three
generations of hypergamy through racial
whitening.

People in many other countries have tended to treat race less rigidly, both in
their self-identification and how they regard others. Just as a person with
physically recognizable African ancestry can claim to be black in the United
States, someone with recognizable Caucasian ancestry may be considered
white in Brazil, even if mixed race.

In December 2002, The Washington Post ran a story on the one-drop rule and
differences in Latin American practices. In the reporter's opinion:

Someone with Sidney Poitier's deep chocolate complexion would

be considered white if his hair were straight and he made a living
in a profession. That might not seem so odd, Brazilians say, when
you consider that the fair-complexioned actresses Rashida Jones
('Parks and Recreation' and 'The Office') and Lena Horne are
identified as black in the United States.[24]

According to Jose Neinstein, a native white Brazilian and executive director of

the Brazilian-American Cultural Institute in Washington, in the United States, "If
you are not quite white, then you are black." However, in Brazil, "If you are not
quite black, then you are white." Neinstein recalls talking with a man of Poitier's
complexion when in Brazil: "We were discussing ethnicity, and I asked him,
'What do you think about this from your perspective as a black man?' He
turned his head to me and said, 'I'm not black,' ... It simply paralyzed me. I
couldn't ask another question."[24]

Puerto Rico

During the Spanish colonial period, Puerto Rico had laws such as the Regla del
Sacar or Gracias al Sacar, by which a person of black ancestry could be
considered legally white so long as the individual could prove that at least one
person per generation in the last four generations had also been legally white.
Thus persons of black ancestry with known white lineage were classified as
white, the opposite of the "one-drop rule" in the United States.[26]

Racial mixtures of blacks and whites in modern

America

Given the intense interest in ethnicity, genetic genealogists and other scientists
have studied population groups. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. publicized such genetic
studies on his two series African American Lives, shown on PBS, in which the
ancestry of prominent figures was explored. His experts discussed the results
of autosomal DNA tests, in contrast to direct-line testing, which survey all the
DNA that has been inherited from the parents of an individual.[14] Autosomal
tests focus on SNPs.[14][14]

The specialists on Gates' program summarized the make-up of the United

States population by the following:

58 percent of African Americans have at least 12.5% European ancestry

(equivalent of one great-grandparent);

19.6 percent of African Americans have at least 25% European ancestry

(equivalent of one grandparent);

1 percent of African Americans have at least 50% European ancestry

(equivalent of one parent) (Gates is one of these, he discovered, having a total
of 51% European ancestry among various distant ancestors); and

5 percent of African Americans have at least 12.5% Native American ancestry

(equivalent to one great-grandparent).[27]

In 2002, Mark D. Shriver, a molecular anthropologist at Penn State University,

published results of a study regarding the racial admixture of Americans who
identified as white or black:[28] Shriver surveyed a 3,000-person sample from
25 locations in the United States and tested subjects for autosomal genetic
make-up:

Of those persons who identified as white:

Individuals had an average 0.7% black ancestry, which is the equivalent of
having 1 black and 127 white ancestors among one's 128 5×great-
grandparents

Shriver estimates that 70% of white Americans have no African ancestors (in
part because a high proportion of current whites are descended from more
recent immigrants from Europe of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, rather
than those early migrants to the colonies, who in some areas lived and worked
closely with Africans, free, indentured or slave, and formed relations with
them).
 Among the 30% of identified whites who have African ancestry, Shriver
estimates their black racial admixture is 2.3%; the equivalent of having had 3
black ancestors among their 128 5×great-grandparents.[28]

Among those who identified as black:

The average proportion of white ancestry was 18%, the equivalent of having 22
white ancestors among their 128 5×great-grandparents.

About 10% have more than 50% white ancestry.

Black people in the United States are more racially mixed than white people,
reflecting historical experience here, including the close living and working
conditions among the small populations of the early colonies, when indentured
servants, both black and white, and slaves, married or formed unions. Mixed-
race children of white mothers were born free, and many families of free
people of color were started in those years. 80 percent of the free African-
American families in the Upper South in the censuses of 1790 to 1810 can be
traced as descendants of unions between white women and African men in
colonial Virginia, not of slave women and white men. In the early colony,
conditions were loose among the working class, who lived and worked closely
together. After the American Revolutionary War, their free mixed-race
descendants migrated to the frontiers of nearby states along with other
primarily European Virginia pioneers.[29] The admixture also reflects later
conditions under slavery, when white planters or their sons, or overseers,
frequently raped African women.[30] There were also freely chosen
relationships among individuals of different or mixed races.

Shriver's 2002 survey found different current admixture rates by region,

reflecting historic patterns of settlement and change, both in terms of
populations who migrated and their descendants' unions. For example, he
found that the black populations with the highest percentage of white ancestry
lived in California and Seattle, Washington. These were both majority-white
destinations during the Great Migration of 1940–1970 of African Americans
from the Deep South of Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi. Blacks sampled in
those two locations had more than 25% white European ancestry on
average.[28]

As noted by Troy Duster, direct-line testing of the Y-chromosome and mtDNA

(mitochondrial DNA) fails to pick up the heritage of many other ancestors.[12]
DNA testing has limitations and should not be depended on by individuals to
answer all questions about heritage.[12] Duster said that neither Shriver's
research nor Gates' PBS program adequately acknowledged the limitations of
genetic testing.[12][31]
Similarly, the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism (IPCB) notes that:
"Native American markers" are not found solely among Native Americans.
While they occur more frequently among Native Americans, they are also
found in people in other parts of the world.[32] Genetic testing has shown three
major waves of ancient migration from Asia among Native Americans but
cannot distinguish further among most of the various tribes in the Americas.
Some critics of testing believe that more markers will be identified as more
Native Americans of various tribes are tested, as they believe that the early
epidemics due to smallpox and other diseases may have altered genetic
representation.[12][31]

Much effort has been made to discover the ways in which the one-drop rule
continues to be socially perpetuated today. For example, in her interview of
black/white adults in the South, Nikki Khanna uncovers that one way the one-
drop rule is perpetuated is through the mechanism of reflected appraisal. Most
respondents identified as black, explaining that this is because both black and
white people see them as black as well.[33]

Allusions

Charles W. Chesnutt, who was of mixed race and grew up in the North, wrote
stories and novels about the issues of mixed-race people in southern society in
the aftermath of the Civil War.

The one-drop rule and its consequences have been the subject of numerous
works of popular culture. The American musical Show Boat (1927) opens in
1887 on a Mississippi River boat, after the Reconstruction era and imposition
of racial segregation and Jim Crow in the South. Steve, a white man married to
a mixed-race woman who passes as white, is pursued by a Southern sheriff.
He intends to arrest Steve and charge him with miscegenation for being
married to a woman of partly black ancestry. Steve pricks his wife's finger and
swallows some of her blood. When the sheriff arrives, Steve asks him whether
he would consider a man to be white if he had "negro blood" in him. The sheriff
replies that "one drop of Negro blood makes you a Negro in these parts". Steve
tells the sheriff that he has "more than a drop of negro blood in me". After
being assured by others that Steve is telling the truth, the sheriff leaves without
arresting Steve.[34][35]

See also
 Black Indians

Blood quantum laws

Cherokee Freedmen

Hispanic and Latino Americans

Historical race concepts

Limpieza de sangre

Métis

Mestizo

Miscegenation

Mischling

Mixed Race Day

Passing

Brown Paper Bag Test

Pencil test

Quadroon

Racial hygiene

Splitting (psychology)

References

Notes

1. In 1855, John Bigelk, nephew of Big Elk, described a Sioux attack in which the
mixed-race man Logan Fontenelle, son of an Omaha woman and a French
trader, was killed: "They killed the white man, the interpreter, who was with us."
As the historian Melvin Randolph Gilmore noted, Bigelk called Fontenelle "a
white man because he had a white father. This was a common designation of
half-breeds by full-bloods, just as a mulatto might commonly be called a
[black] by white people, although as much white as black by race."[8]

Quotes

1. "Ten years later [referring to its 2000 report], TJF [Thomas Jefferson
Foundation] and most historians now believe that, years after his wife's death,
Thomas Jefferson was the father of the six children of Sally Hemings
 mentioned in Jefferson's records, including Beverly, Harriet, Madison and Eston
Hemings."[5]

2. "To be defined as 'mulatto' under Virginia law in 1822, a person had to have at
least one-quarter African ancestry." (This is the equivalent to one
grandparent.)[4]:68

Citations

1. Davis, F. James. Frontline."Who's black. One nation's definition" . Accessed 27

February 2015.

2. Dworkin, Shari L. The Society Pages. "Race, Sexuality, and the 'One Drop Rule':
More Thoughts about Interracial Couples and Marriage" . Accessed 27
February 2015.

3. Conrad P. Kottak, "What is hypodescent?" Archived 14 August 2010 at the

Wayback Machine, Human Diversity and "Race", Cultural Anthropology, Online
Learning, McGraw Hill, accessed 21 April 2010.

4. Joshua D. Rothman, Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families Across

the Color Line in Virginia, 1787–1861 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina, 2003), p. 68.

5. "Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: A Brief Account" , Monticello Website,

accessed 22 June 2011.

6. "All Niggers, More or Less!", The News and Courier, October 17, 1895.

7. Kimberly Tallbear (2003). "DNA, Blood, and Racializing the Tribe". Wicazo Sa
Review. University of Minnesota Press. 18 (1): 81–107.
doi:10.1353/wic.2003.0008 . JSTOR 140943 .

8. Melvin Randolph Gilmore, "The True Logan Fontenelle" , Publications of the

Nebraska State Historical Society, Vol. 19, edited by Albert Watkins, Nebraska
State Historical Society, 1919, pp. 64–65, at GenNet, accessed 25 August
2011.

9. http://lalosttribe.com/louisianas-lost-tribe-our-story.html

10. Langston Hughes, The Big Sea, an Autobiography (New York: Knopf, 1940).

11. Richard Willing (1 February 2006). "DNA rewrites history for African-
Americans" . USA Today. Retrieved 5 August 2008.

12. Duster, Troy (2008). "Deep Roots and Tangled Branches" . Chronicle of Higher
Education. Archived from the original on 26 July 2011. Retrieved 2 October
2008.
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14. John Hawks (2008). "How African Are You? What genealogical testing can't tell
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15. https://amhistory.si.edu/perfectunion/non-flash/removal_process.html

16. " 'One-drop rule' persists" . 9 December 2010.

17. Paul Heinegg, Free African Americans in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
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19. Laws of the State of Florida, First Session of the Fourteenth General Assembly
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21. Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, 1916.

22. For the Plecker story, see Smith, J. Douglas (2002). "The Campaign for Racial
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65–106. doi:10.2307/3069691 . JSTOR 3069691 .

23. For Drake, see Dominguez, Virginia R. (1986). White by Definition: Social
Classification in Creole Louisiana . New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
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24. "People of Color Who Never Felt They Were Black" The Washington Post.

25. FAQ on the Black Seminoles, John Horse, and Rebellion .

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27. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African
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21.

28. Sailer, Steve (8 May 2002). "Analysis: White prof finds he's not" . United Press
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29. Paul Heinegg, Free African Americans in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
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30. Moon, Dannell, "Slavery", in Encyclopedia of Rape, Merril D. Smith (Ed.),
Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004, p 234

31. ScienceDaily (2008). "Genetic Ancestral Testing Cannot Deliver On Its Promise,
Study Warns" . ScienceDaily. Retrieved 2 October 2008.

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Determine Who is American Indian?" . The WEYANOKE Association. Archived
from the original on 24 July 2011. Retrieved 27 October 2009.

33. Khanna, Nikki (2010). "If you're half black, you're just black: Reflected
Appraisals and the Persistence of the One-Drop Rule". The Sociological
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8525.2009.01162.x .

34. Show Boat (1951) Overview , Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 2008-03-21.

35. Make Believe – Show Boat – Synopsis, from the 1993 Canadian cast
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Further reading

Daniel, G. Reginald. More Than Black? Multiracial Identity and the New Racial
Order. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 2002. ISBN 1-56639-909-2.

Daniel, G. Reginald. Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States:
Converging Paths?. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State
University Press. 2006. ISBN 0-271-02883-1.

Davis, James F., Who Is Black?: One Nation's Definition. University Park PA:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-271-02172-1.

Guterl, Matthew Press, The Color of Race in America, 1900–1940. Cambridge

MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-674-01012-4.

Moran, Rachel F., Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race & Romance,
Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003. ISBN 0-226-53663-7.

Romano, Renee Christine, Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Post-War

America. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-674-01033-7.

Savy, Pierre, « Transmission, identité, corruption. Réflexions sur trois cas

d'hypodescendance », L'homme. Revue française d'anthropologie, 182, 2007
(« Racisme, antiracisme et sociétés »), pp. 53–80.

Yancey, George, Just Don't Marry One: Interracial Dating, Marriage & Parenting.
Judson Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8170-1439-X.
External links

New Life for the "One Drop" Rule

PBS – Brazil in Black and White

"Battles in Red, Black, and White: Virginia's Racial Integrity Law of 1924" ,
University of Virginia

Lawrence Wright, "One Drop of Blood" , The New Yorker, 24 July 1994

John Terrence A. Rosenthal, "Batson Revisited in America's 'New Era' of

Multiracial Persons" , Law Review 33:1, Seton Hall University